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Interaction of aging and bilingualism in speech perception
Poster Session A, Wednesday, September 30, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
Beatriz Barragan1, Miwako Hisagi2; 1A.T. Still University, 2California State University, Los Angeles
Introduction Hearing loss has significant consequences for functional health, social engagement, and cognition. Age is the strongest predictor of auditory decline, with 50% of adults 75 and older having disabling hearing loss. In the United States, approximately 4.6 million older adults are Spanish–English bilinguals, and Hispanic/Latino individuals are projected to become the largest minority group by 2028. This demographic shift highlights the need for culturally and linguistically appropriate audiological assessment. However, the interaction between aging, hearing loss, and bilingualism in speech perception remains poorly understood. Factors such as language proficiency, dominance, and cross-language interaction may influence performance in ways that resemble, or obscure, true perceptual deficits. This series of studies used combined behavioral and electrophysiological methods to examined how aging and bilingualism jointly affect the mechanisms of speech processing. Method Experiment 1 examined sentence recognition in bilingual adults using the English and Spanish AzBio Sentence Test in quiet and noise, comparing younger and older bilinguals to younger English monolinguals. Building on these behavioral findings, Experiment 2 focused on more specific speech perception processes by evaluating vowel discrimination and speech-in-noise perception (QuickSIN) in older monolingual adults, with and without sensorineural hearing loss, and older Spanish–English bilingual adults with normal hearing. Extending this work to the neural level, Experiment 3 measured neural indices of automatic speech discrimination using mismatch negativity (MMN), an event-related potential reflecting the brain’s detection of auditory changes. EEG responses to vowel contrasts were recorded in younger and older monolingual and bilingual adults, and a phonological memory task was included to examine potential fatigue or modulation effects on neural speech processing. Results In Experiment 1, young bilinguals performed similarly to monolinguals in English, and both groups did significantly better than older bilinguals. In Spanish, older bilinguals performed better than young bilinguals; language proficiency predicted performance. Across age groups, results showed a combined effect of aging, language dominance, and bilingual experience on speech recognition. In Experiment 2, monolinguals outperformed bilinguals in vowel discrimination regardless of hearing status, but no group differences were observed on the QuickSIN, indicating bilingual strong global speech-in-noise perception even when segmental discrimination is less precise. In Experiment 3, younger adults demonstrated stable MMN responses across conditions. Older monolinguals showed reduced MMN amplitude and degraded waveform morphology, whereas older bilinguals exhibited enhanced and earlier MMN responses compared to older monolinguals, suggesting efficient neural processing despite biological aging. Conclusions Findings demonstrate that aging and bilingualism interact in complex ways across behavioral and neural domains of speech perception. While bilingual older adults may show reduced precision in segmental discrimination, they maintain robust speech-in-noise performance and exhibit neural adaptability. Language dominance and linguistic experience play a critical role in shaping perceptual outcomes, highlighting the importance of selecting assessment tools aligned with clients’ language backgrounds. Overall, bilingualism may confer resilience in auditory processing, even in the presence of age-related decline. These results support the need for more inclusive research and the development of culturally responsive clinical practices for the growing population of bilingual older adults.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism,